Unclaimed Digital Assets ; unlocking the untapped value and potential on the digital sphere.

 In 2011, the government of Kenya created a body mandated with re-uniting unclaimed financial assets with their rightful owners. The concept of realigning financial growth prospects of a nation with a critical factor such as connecting assets with their owners cannot be over emphasized in any country in the world. In a similar manner, the same great need now arises in the digital sphere where a lot of unclaimed assets lie.

Anywhere, you go and have conversation especially in countries that have highly embraced the digital revolution from the early 2000s , you will hear of many stories of loss of data and other critical information on the internet, either contributed to by poor memory of the asset holder of from malfunction of the system leading to loss of important data or information over the internet or other online or offline digital systems.

Personally I recall having set up an account with a website initially known as wetpaint and organizing information on there concerning a social enterprise I was working with in the year 2009 to later lose my account, the information and the well thought out plans laid out there through the assistance of their program and tools on the platform. Digital assets a term meaning anything that exists in digital format and comes with the right to use or electronic files of data that can be used according to Merlinone, a digital assets management platform asserts that individuals and other entities ought to carefully evaluate the risks involved with the loss or destruction of digital assets.

For unclaimed digital assets authorities should also be set up to administer unclaimed digital assets so as to bridge the gap created from the loss of access to such valuable digital assets. Another key driver to the future of how we define and cover digital assets is right underway, the shift to the metaverse where our understanding of digital assets might change to encompass more than just electronic data or text and other information we may not currently consider as digital data in today’s day and age.

It is therefore, much imperative that we realise this great need to secure digital assets and understand or rather manage the risks of digital assests, this perhaps can be realized through more ethical practices by companies collecting data from individuals or other corporates for financial related gain or other purposes. The better these companies commit to more efficient and transparent handling of this information, the better.

The adoption of charter should also be encouraged so that the company or entity acting as stewards of the digital data can commit to the responsibility of protection of the digital assets. However, in most cases, individuals and entities commit to rendering their digital assets without reading the full print or rather the terms and conditions stipulated by the receiver, often denying any responsibility of the ill-use of the information or the overall loss of it.

With the advancement of technology to allow for bots to do much more, the delegation of the tasks to the bots presents an opportunity for the interference with the digital assets in various ways such as duplication of digital assets without prior authorization or consent of the authors. Consider the case of the bots that could duplicate twitter accounts and also in other cases the bots used on websites to interface the visitor to information regarding products and services provided by the website platform. The definition of digital assets with soon encompass much more, as we move to the transhuman phase of human development. Things such as the digital experience created by a VR metaverse platform will also amount to valued digital asset as well as “unreal” items such as virtual houses and shops and land for sale on the metaverse will also matter a lot as digital assets that will also bring up litigation cases which I believe, the courts or rather justice system in different countries is not ready to deal with from the fast advancement of digital technology.

The governments and private entities ought to stay ahead of the curve in the prediction of the evolution of the digital sphere with preparedness through legislation in law to cater to this fast changes in the digital assets sphere as to capitalize or rather leverage on the growth and development in this ever expanding area of claimed and unclaimed digital assets and disputes that result , related to the same.

Considering the millions of users in the digital sphere that die every day, with no one else left with the access of their digital platform accounts such as social media accounts, these creates a leeway for the exploitation of digital assets including photo, texts, video files, graphic design materials  with tagged intellectual value of the digital assets among others. It is critical therefore, to have third party administrators who would act as retrievers and reconnect this digital assets to their rightful owners or the next of kin for better use and stewardship if not even necessarily for any other gain, a matter of consideration for individual, corporate entities, other organizations and governments.